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— Photo: Vipinchandran

CHANGING TIMES: The steps to property registration are being tightened.

The goal of achieving this transparency and accountability appear ever so elusive as controversies explode in the face of these efforts. A senior government official says the Registration Department has learnt from each of these controversies as it tr ies to bring about the much-needed changes.

Recent reports indicate that the government has decided to make production of possession certificate compulsory at the time of registration of property, a practice not prevalent now, says a senior document writer in Kochi.

The move is being introduced in the wake of reports that the government is losing about Rs. 1,000 crore annually in registration fees and stamp duties.

Possession certificates are issued by the village officers and banks have been insisting on possession certificates when a piece of land is mortgaged. Combined with the location sketch, the possession certificate is the certificate of ownership, showing the actual location and the boundaries of a particular property.

The possession certificate is an unambiguous document backed by enquiries in the neighbourhood of the said property, ascertaining the extent of the property, its boundaries and physical verification, says a Revenue Department official.

Possession certificate testifies to the total ownership of a property and is not issued when it is subject to revenue recovery proceedings, he says.

Thumb impressions and photographs of both buyers and sellers have been made compulsory at the time of registration of property.

The attempt is to prevent benami land deals which were reported to be widespread. The photographs are right on the first page of the sale deed. However, often the buyers do not make their physical appearance at the place of registration. The problem has been compounded by a large number of people who are not in residence at the time of property deals. If a person is out of the State and wants to buy a piece of land in Kerala, he is well able to do it now without making an appearance at the registration office.

The sellers are now required to produce an identification card, it generally being the identity cards issued by the Election Commission. Ration cards, driving licenses, passports or PAN cards from the Income-Tax Department are treated as valid identification cards.

The Registration Department has recently started insisting that the buyer or the seller will have to fill in and submit Form no. 58, a declaration on ownership of property. This is prescribed in Kerala Land Reforms Act, 1967 and the Registration Department has now made it mandatory. Circulars have now been sent out to all registration offices asking the officers to insist on the filing of these forms.

The declaration is a means of finding out if a person owns more than the mandated 15 acres.

The measure was initiated after reports that individuals were massing land beyond the prescribed limit.

One of the steps that will go to ease the work at the registration offices is the introduction of digital copiers. It is now possible to get digital copies of land deeds, attested by the respective offices.

With thousands of applications coming in during a year, digital copiers will ease the congestion and the waiting period for getting copies of land deeds.

Another move by the Registration Department recently has been that the transfer of registry in cases involving an acre or more have to be supervised by the District Collector.

This was a function previously carried out at the village office level.

The step was initiated to prevent any malpractices. The paperwork involved in the transfer of registry is still carried out at the village level and forwarded to the taluk office, which, in turn, submits the papers to the District Collector’s office.

The critics of the move have pointed to the extra burden of work brought upon the Collector’s office.

For example, there are 25 registration offices in Ernakulam district from where transfer of registry applications will reach the District Collector’s office.

Though various measures appear as piecemeal to address the larger issues, the government has declared its intentions to overhaul the entire process of land registration in a phased manner.

One of the major steps being taken now is the publication of a draft fair-value document for the entire State. Work on it is near complete and the document will be out soon, says a senior official of the Registration Department.

Notification of fair value will sort out a lot of confusion that now arise at the time of a property transaction.

Fixing of fair value has been a long-standing demand. Fixing of fair value for various classes of land will help bring out a general order to the present situation where there is a lot of confusion.

Computerisation and digitisation of land records, making online transactions possible, and introduction of land information system are also on the cards.

Classification of land, as planned by the government, will go a long way in addressing environmental issues, including encroachment on coastal or forest areas and conversion of land. Land classification will help introduce scientific land management too.

One of the problems the State government and environmentalists have been wrestling with for over two decades is the continuous conversion of paddy fields for commercial use. While the spiralling price of land is one reason, lack of a clear policy initiative on the matter has been pointed out as the more serious of the reasons for the current problem.

Considering the burgeoning demand for land and the scarcity of it for industrial purposes or for luring potential investors into the State, the government has plans to form a land bank. The land bank will first of all be a measure to protect government land scattered across the State and are often not accounted for.

Since the government is not keen on selling land to private companies, it has been planning to lease land for a long term for industrial or commercial purposes. Formation of a land bank will help the government identify land for such uses easily.

While the current controversies involving land deals in the State have made the Registration and Revenue departments more cautious, the definite emergence of a policy framework within which land transactions will take place in the near future is a pointer to better times to come.

Given that digitisation of land records, computerisation of the Registration Department and satellite-mapping and classification of land are in the offing, it will be possible in the not so remote future to do land transactions over the Internet.

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